Oh wherefore art thou win2k/xp 'Startup Disk'??

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dankephoto's picture
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Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
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Oh wherefore art thou win2k/xp 'Startup Disk'??

I'd wish to easily switch between different win installs, but I have yet to figger how to do it. If only there was a simple app/util/control-panel to do the job, similar to Startup Disk in Mac OS.

dan k

dankephoto's picture
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discovering the drive signature for the boot.ini file

OK, so here's the thing (lacking a simple Startup Disk analog) - I need to discover the drive signature that's in the boot.ini** file what identifies the drive or volume to which I want to boot. I've been able to install XP onto my previously win2k-only system, but when I cloned that smallish XP drive to a newer larger drive I 'lost' the original volume signature. The earlier drive had of course a different drive signature from the new drive, so even though they occupy the same place in the system, the boot.ini line pointing to the old drive doesn't boot to the new drive.

I have no idea how to discover the new drive's signature so I can point the boot.ini file to that disk.

If it matters, these are SCSI drives attached to an Adaptec UW2 card. I can reattach the old drive and it'll boot fine, but that's a bit of a PITA, not to mention the old drive lacks stuff, like 170GB of space. Blum 3 Plus I really don't want to have to reinstall XP to the new disk!!

dan k

**

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="win2k" /fastdetect
signature(162fc7c2)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

eeun's picture
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Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
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Are you able to use a boot ma

Are you able to use a boot manager like GAG or XOSL?
Haven't tried either with more than 1 drive myself, so YMMV.

Edit: You might have better luck than the two links above by trying WinGrub.

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